Apple – DRM = More money?

Apple announced that they are now selling Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free music on iTunes for $1.29 a song, as opposed to $0.99 for DRM songs.  Currently, the DRM songs can only be listened to on computers that you have activated on your iTunes account – you are limited to five active computers at any one time.  On a positive note, the new “iTunes Plus” songs will have twice the bitrate as old iTunes songs – 256kb/s vs. 128kb/s.  You can upgrade your old iTunes songs to new iTunes Plus songs for $0.30.  Apple will still offer $0.99 standard songs.

Yeah, this is a move in the right direction… but it’s silly to make people pay to get rid of the arbitrary copy-protection scheme Apple put on their songs, especially when you can get rid of the copy-protection yourself by burning the tracks to a CD and ripping the CD to MP3s.  Apple should have offered DRM-free music from the get-go but I’m glad they are offering it now – especially with higher resolution recordings (ahem… which is another thing they should have done from the start).

The part that puzzles me about this announcement is the $0.30 upgrade for your current songs.  Before, once you purchased a track from iTunes, you were SOL if you deleted the file.  That’s right, you couldn’t redownload a song you purchased.  But you needed to connect to the server to validate your account in order to play the song in the first place.  That’s a lot of back-assery!  Another nice move would be the availability to access your iTunes account and download songs from any activated computer.  Unfortunately, Apple seems to be raking in the cash with their current user-impaired model so it’s unlikely they’ll change anytime soon.

-Bob

UConn here I come!

So it happened again – an e-mail from Dr. Jepsen stating it’ll be another year before she starts her research group and I didn’t get into other research groups at MIT. So I’m very excited to announce that I’m going to be starting my masters degree (probably leading into a PhD) with Dr. Bahram Javidi’s research group at the University of Connecticut! I’ve been down there a couple times and have already decided on a research topic! It’s real-time 3d sensing and identification of microorganisms using holography. I’m really excited to start work (took the last half of last week off to get all read up on holography and microorganism fun stuff)!

Originally, Kate and I were hoping to stay in the Boston area. She’s been a teaching assistant in a school for the last couple years and after finishing her teaching masters degree this summer was hoping to take over her own classroom. Unfortunately, she didn’t get a job there (we’re both bitter towards Boston!) so we’re free to look elsewhere. I only need to take one class at a time at UConn, and the one this fall only meets once a week (on Friday afternoons even!) so the thought was for me to keep my full time job at Lincoln and do a part time masters program, doing research in my spare time.

After my visit down there earlier this week, it’s become very apparent to me that it’ll be VERY VERY difficult to do an intensive research project at the same time as working full time… and there’s also the 80 mile commute between work and school to consider. Right now, I think I’m going to cut back to working half time in the fall, either working two very long days and spending three in lab at UConn or come in on weekends. We’re looking to move to the middle of Massachusetts near the Connecticut border so Kate can actually use the Massachusetts teaching certification she’s worked so hard for! UConn is only about 20 minutes from the CT/MA border so that can easily be worked out on my end. Plus, there are TONS of teaching openings for Kate!! Yay!

So things are a bit up in the air with Kate searching for a job… really hope she can find something good and me trying to figure out what to do about balancing work and school. It’ll probably be tough but we’re both really looking forward to moving as far away from Boston as we can (I’m going to get a stupid thing about Boston column going here soon).

So what else is new? I’ve been spending way more time and money on comic books and related paraphernalia than I really should be I’ve recently started acquiring Original Comic Art, focusing on pages that hold significance from my childhood. If you are interested in experiencing the real nerdy nerdy (and roll your eyes like Kate rolls her eyes), then take a look at my gallery at the Comic Art Fans community website: Linky Yay nerdiness!

I’m also working on a fun little 3d movie using Flash. I started another blog to document the process. Check out my White Rabbit 3d Blog! It’s good for you!

That’s me… I’ve been REALLY self absorbed lately trying to deal with all the crap going on. Will get out and say hi to everyone soon!

Hope the weekend was nice and the weather treated you much better than it did stupid Boston (eh, Boston deserves it, stupid stupid Boston)

-Bob

Things I Hate About Boston: “Journalism”

So not only was it news, but it was the FRONT PAGE TOP STORY of today’s Boston Herald that Patriots QB Tom Brady was caught wearing a *gasp* Yankees hat!

Boston is stupid.

-Bob